1. Not everyone is lucky enough (or wants) to be doing Thanksgiving at their homes. For those seeking an alternative today, Seattle has plenty to offer.
If you are not looking to cook anything yourself, there are plenty of restaurants around Seattle offering Thanksgiving meals. The website Opentable.com has put up a long list of Seattle restaurants serving meals today.
The site offers descriptions of restaurant prices and types, along with links to reservations.
Restaurants not listed on the site, such as Cafe Flora at 2901 East Madison St and Carmelita at 7314 Greenwood N, are serving vegetarian alternatives until 6:45 p.m. and 9 p.m., respectively. At the same time, Eat Local on Queen Anne Ave N. is offering take-home meals made from organic and local ingredients, while supplies last.
Also not on the list is a feast at the Five Point Cafe off Denny (415 Cedar Street), where you can drop in any time between 10 am and 10 pm and where you’ll have two Thanksgiving options: a Roasted turkey meal (along with brown sugar glazed butternut squash) or a pit roasted ham meal (with glazed sweet potatoes). Both options come with Mandy’s green bean casserole and pumpkin or pecan pie. (There are also veggie and vegan options.)
And for those really looking for a different experience, there is also the Royal Argosy boat tour. The trip is generally three hours, and will have a thanksgiving meal for tomorrow’s dinner cruise.
There are also a number of free thanksgiving meals for the less fortunate. Tuxedos and Tennis Shoes will be hosting their annual free community Thanksgiving dinner from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. at the Hall at Fauntleroy, 9131 California Ave.
Other free meals will be given out at:
The Bread of Life Mission, 97 S. Main St., 11 a.m., 3 and 6 p.m.
Mount Zion Church, 1634 19th Ave, 12 p.m.—2:30 p.m.
Westgate Chapel, 22901 Edmonds Way, 11 a.m. 1:30 and 3:30 p.m.
2. Speaking of Thanksgiving, the 2010 legislative session is coming up, and while many do-gooder lobbyists will be playing defense in the face of the $2.6 billion shortfall, there are some things they’re looking to get done: Giving collective bargaining rights to groups of workers, like community college faculty, that don’t currently have them; giving part time workers access to the unemployment insurance program; giving homeowners the right to sue delinquent builders; giving workers funding for green job training by ending tax breaks to big coal; giving schools green retrofits.
3. No big surprise here, at least to those who’ve followed the debate over whether roads really “pay for themselves”: Over the last 25 years, according to a study released yesterday by Subsidyscope, the amount of money non-highway-users have paid for highways has doubled, from $35 billion in 1982 to $70 billion in 2007. (All dollar figures in 2007 dollars). Non-drivers, in other words, subsidize drivers to the tune of $70 billion a year in the form of taxes, like sales tax, that have no direct connection to transportation.
Additionally, the study found that the amount of road funding generated by user fees (things like tolls, gas taxes, car registration fees, etc.) has declined in the last decade —from 61 percent to 51 percent. Roads, in other words, are the welfare queens of government infrastructure, sucking up subsidies from, and at the expense of, people who don’t use them at all.
4. Conservative blog Sound Politics had a post up yesterday gloating about what it described as “low ridership on Seattle’s light rail system.”
Our first reaction was that Sound Transit’s Link light rail is actually Seattle, Tukwila, and (starting in December) SeaTac’s light rail system, not “Seattle’s.”
Our second reaction was that while weekday ridership, at just over 16,000 is indeed falling short of Sound Transit’s year-end projection of 21,000 trips a day, that’s no reason for panic (or for concluding, as Sound Politics does, that light rail is not “a great success.”) As Seattle Transit Blog has pointed out repeatedly, ridership numbers have been climbing steadily (from less than 15,000 in September to more than 16,000 in October, for example).
More importantly, Central Link light rail is a decades-long project, not a months-long one, so it’s irresponsibly premature to declare it a failure just three months into its existence.
Moreover, as STB points out (sorry for cached link; the original post seems to be down):
It’s easy to say that transit-friendly Seattle should have warmly embraced rail off the bat, but we have to look at who Link was being marketed to and how it was being marketed. The biggest misconception was that Rainier Valley residents were suddenly going to make a mode switch to Link. Considering that the 7 and the 48 had aggregate ridership counts of over 22,000 in 2007, one could assume that any given rider traveling in or out of the Valley on these routes would have gladly switched to rail. As we’ve discovered, that’s not true. We like to muddy things up with the mantra that if you’re loyal to bus, then you’re loyal to transit, and if you’re loyal to transit, then you’re loyal to rail. However, the average transit rider doesn’t see it that way.
People are still taking the 7, the 42, and the 48—not just because of the cultural differences STB points out, but because, in many cases, taking the bus makes more sense (remember, those routes don’t exactly parallel light rail, and not everybody wants to walk a mile). Our guess is that rail ridership will continue to increase, if slowly, until Airport Link opens, and continue to improve after that. Short version: It’s far too soon to write light rail’s obituary.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Today’s Morning Fizz brought to you by the Sierra Club:
